This paper discusses two conservative ways of treating evidence. (I) Closing inquiry involves discounting evidence bearing on one's belief unless it is particularly strong evidence; (II) biased assimilation involves dedicating more investigative resources to scrutinizing disconfirming evidence (than confirming evidence), thereby increasing the chances of finding reasons to dismiss it. It is natural to worry that these practices lead to irrational biases in favor of one's existing beliefs, and that they make one's epistemic condition significantly path-sensitive by giving a bigger role to batches of evidence obtained earlier in the course of inquiry compared with those subsequently acquired. However, I argue that both practices are demanded by considerations of practical rationality. I also argue that, contrary to initial appearances, there is little reason to worry about the effects of these practices on the dynamics of one's beliefs.

Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a sociopolitical phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an exercise of practical rationality. Taking advantage of this fact, I use a plan-theoretic semantics for the deontic modalities as a basis for understanding individual and shared intentions. This results in a view that accords well with what we currently have reason to believe about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings, and where original intentionality can be understood in terms of the shared intentionality of a community.

This essay provides a novel argument for impurism, the view that certain non-truth-relevant factors can make a difference to a belief's epistemic standing. I argue that purists, unlike impurists, are forced to claim that certain ‘high-stakes’ cases rationally require agents to be akratic. Akrasia is one of the paradigmatic forms of irrationality. So purists, in virtue of calling akrasia rationally mandatory in a range of cases with no obvious precedent, take on a serious theoretical cost. By focusing on akrasia, and on the nature of the normative judgments involved therein, impurists gain a powerful new way to frame a core challenge for purism. They also gain insight about the way in which impurism is true: my argument motivates the claim that there is moral encroachment in epistemology.

Recent work by Joseph Raz, Niko Kolodny, and Sergio Tenenbaum suggest that there are no normative constraints peculiar to intentions as such. Such constraints are a myth. We can understand the rationality of intention without positing that intention is a mental state. I argue that, further, we can understand the descriptive nature of intention (i.e., its role in intrapersonal coordination) without positing that intention is a mental state. Such a posit is itself a myth. Instead, intention is an action with certain characteristic sub-actions that play a coordinating role.

Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

Deliberation often begins with the question ‘What do I want to do?’ rather than a question about what one ought to do. This paper takes that question at face value, as a question about which of one’s desires is strongest, which sometimes guides action. The paper aims to explain which properties of a desire make that desire strong, in the sense of ‘strength’ relevant to this deliberative question. The paper argues that one’s judgment about one wants most will sometimes play a verdictive role, partially determining what the agent most wants, and so making itself true.

There is a rich tradition within game theory, decision theory, economics, and philosophy correlating practical rationality with impartiality, and spatial and temporal neutrality. I argue that in some cases we should give priority to people over both times and places, and to times over places. I also show how three plausible dominance principles regarding people, places, and times conflict, so that we cannot accept all three. However, I argue that there are some cases where we should give priority to times over people, suggesting that there is impersonal value to the distribution of high quality life over different times.

If Hume is correct that the descriptive and the normative are ‘entirely different’ matters, then it would seem to follow that endorsing a given account of action-explanation does not restrict the account of practical normativity one may simultaneously endorse. In this essay, I challenge the antecedent of this conditional by targeting its consequent. Specifically, I argue that if one endorses a Humean account of action-explanation, which many find attractive, one is thereby committed to a Humean account of practical normativity, which many find unattractive. The key to this argument is showing that the justificatory base of any anti-Humean normative view is a generic representation of ideal rationality, which precludes any such view from combining coherently with a Humean account of action-explanation. If my arguments are successful, they demonstrate a way in which one's views in action theory can both limit and be limited by the ethical views one endorses.

Why our interest in natural law still today? We can always criticize obligations and found human rights on the basis of natural law and we cannot accept a large gap between inclinations and desires on one hand and norms on the other. Natural law is not the lowest common denominator among men and is not always immediately apparent. We can find out it by a resolutio, going back from every day moral experience, from virtues and vices, from civil laws to the first principles. Natural law is the work of practical rationality, that makes order, looking with attention to reality and requires harmony between reason and inclinations towards perfect goods. Human desire is informed by reason and practical reason is always also speculative reason, because it knows reality. Desire “has eyes”, recognizing good. What goodness consists in is perfection. Since human being is open to infinity, the main and inclusive desire is desire for happiness and for God. Inclinations towards good are known, valued, interpreted by practical reason and they become moral norms thanks to the same practical reason.The normative dimension of law is also finalistic. The idea of conveniens is different from both Kantian and Utilitarian points of view. Ethical virtues are the flourishment of the seeds of natural law and there is no necessary opposition between freedom and natural law.